VANCOUVER, B.C. – Designated Players have come with all different pedigrees and personalities since 2007, and the verdict is still very much out on the man christened last week as the first in Vancouver Whitecaps history.
The 29-year-old Eric Hassli is a bit of a mystery not just because he’s seen less than an hour of preseason action, but maybe more so because he’s as new to speaking English as he is to cracking open MLS defenses.
But here’s what he does know, and what Whitecaps fans are thrilled to hear: “I like, I like.”
Hassli made his Whitecaps debut during Saturday’s soggy 1-0 preseason loss to the Colorado Rapids at Empire Field, logging 58 minutes before he was pulled. The media session following the invite-only match was perhaps just as taxing for a smiling and friendly Hassli, who met an eager Vancouver throng curious to set sights on the man signed to lead the Whitecaps’ fledgling offense.
“Because I’m new, I’ve been quiet,” Hassli said through a translator. “I’m still learning everyone here.”
[inline_node:330473]Although he told the coaching staff he was sapped at the half, there were glimpses of what the 6-foot-4 former FC Zürich target man can do. The ‘Caps generated the bulk of the genuine scoring chances in the first half and much of that had to do with Hassli, who tested Rapids goalkeeper Matt Pickens early on and then scorched a shot just wide after a razor-sharp turn near the edge the penalty box.
But there were also signs that he’s still far from connected to his new teammates, and understandably so. He was introduced on Thursday, and in the first half Saturday caught a shot from pesky Vancouver winger Nizar Khalfan in the back as he was streaking into the Rapids penalty box.
Hassli took the blow and immediately broke into a smile and flashed a thumbs up to Khalfan, and the message was clear: We’ll get there.
“He was tired,” head coach Teitur Thordarson said. “We didn’t actually didn’t know, when we decided to play him, how deep he could go. At halftime, his legs were gone.”
Hassli joins a Whitecaps locker room that actually seems like a natural fit. He played with Whitecaps left defender Alain Rochat at Zürich and linked up well with him on Saturday, and his soft-spoken demeanor works in stride with the Whitecaps’ gravitation towards team-first players.
The team’s biggest star is decidedly Jay DeMerit (who suddenly has some competition for most tattooed player in the locker room from his new French teammate), and even he was a lower-case name and a grinder with the US national team during last summer’s World Cup.
Hassli, for his part, seems fitted for a similar role on the offensive end. His soft-spoken introductory press conference last week only strengthened the idea that the Whitecaps had signed a European mystery man of sorts, who was obviously reticent to make any hasty promises.
“I liked that about him,” said Pej Namshirin, one of roughly 30 hearty supporters who braved the rain on Saturday at Empire Field. “We’ve bought into this team concept here. You definitely want the guys who are gonna fight the war, and it felt like he’s going to be one of those guys.”
Added Whitecaps technical director Tom Soehn, “He’s not about the show-boating stuff. When he got here I had individual things planned for him, and he wanted to be around the team as much as he could. For me, that’s a really good quality.”
Hassli teamed with Atiba Harris on the front line to start the match on Saturday, giving the Whitecaps a glimpse of what could be one of the most physically imposing attacking duos in the league. The two struggled for the final touch in their first go-around, but according to Harris, the connection is well in the works to help Vancouver become a threat in 2011 and beyond.
“We just have to feed off each other,” Harris said with a smile. “You don’t need to speak the same language to communicate on the soccer field.”
